Righteousness | Being Rebekah

“You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent. Lord my God, I will praise you forever.” ~Psalm 30:11-12

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” ~ 1 John 4:18

Well, God has done it again. I’ve posted earlier this week about needing to regain my focus. And about shame – how the farther you slide, the more tempting it is to hide your face from Christ who is so perfect and righteous.

And God has been doing a work in my heart today, telling me yet again how much He just desires us. He doesn’t desire the ideal of us, the ‘us’ that we’re supposed to be – flawless and righteous all the time. He desires us as we are; no matter how tainted, soiled, dirty we are, we are beautiful in the eyes of God. He knows our hearts and our struggles and our shortcomings even better than we do; He desires us anyway.

The Bible is very clear about being called to be holy and to live a righteous life and to not sin. And those directives are not to be discounted. We are indeed given the tools to be perfect, and we’re told to be. And we try to be. And that is great. That’s how it should be, in fact.

But for those times when that’s not how it is, when we are very much less than perfect and righteous and when we have in fact sinned, do we then hide our faces, knowing that we were told to behave a certain way and failed to do so? No we don’t. Because the punishment will never outweigh the love. And I’m pretty sure that our idea of ‘punishment’ is a worldly definition anyway, not necessarily a spiritual one. God isn’t about judgement and punishment. He is about growing us, and He’s patient with us until we get there. 2 Peter 3:9 even tells us, “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentence.” Because when you think about it, it’s not about following the rules. It’s about desiring Him so deeply and being so attuned and led by the Holy Spirit within that our desires are the same as His. It’s about getting our hearts to the place where we love what He loves and detest what He detests and desire what He desires. Getting to the place where things we’d call ‘sin’ aren’t even appealing to us anymore. It takes a lot of growing and a lot of shedding of oneself to get there.

So my prayer partner and I today laid our fear and burdens down, and sought Him together. We knew we might be in a little bit of trouble for losing perspective, but we needed Him. Hiding isn’t particularly helpful, by the way; if we muck up enough to lose focus in the first place, and that is with God’s guidance, we are most certainly going to muck up everything we try to do without Him. And so it was. And truth be told, we missed Him. So we chatted for a bit, bolstered each other, broke down a wall or two of self-denial and self-justification, and then we prayed. We sought God. We waited on Him. We worshiped Him. We loved Him, and we let Him love us again.

And what I found was not judgement or wrath, but rather a “I’ve missed you and I’ve had so much to tell you and I’m so glad you’re here”. As we were praying, both of us well aware of certain mistakes we’ve been making in our lives and simultaneously praying for others who we think needed it, something cool happened. I was praying over one of her friends, and instead of hearing her own friend’s name, she heard my friend Scott’s name. Scott has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and recently came home after a scary period of time in the hospital. Anyway, she corrected me. And I said, “what? I didn’t say Scott.” “You definitely did because I definitely heard his name.” “Nope definitely not, Scott’s doing fine and I haven’t really been thinking of him during this prayer time.” SO, rather than figure out whether I misspoke or she misheard, we decided that Scott had been thoroughly inserted into our conversation and so it was best to pray for him too. So we did. And it got a little bit intercessory. It was a little odd, but this certainly isn’t the first time this has happened to us, so we went with it and prayed for Scott. Hard. Then, about an hour later, my roommate (Scott’s best friend of 30 years) came home from work and said, “I have an update on Scott. He’s not doing well.”

So, we were called to pray without even knowing why. And this, my friends, is the God we serve. Not a God who seeks to punish for punishment’s sake, but a God who seeks to spiritually grow us. Sometimes that involves consequences; sometimes it involves mercy. Either way, we are never tarnished enough to dull His desire for us. His love is pure and His plan perfect. This time around, God sent us a very clear message: We don’t always have to be cleansed to come before Him; we don’t have to be perfect vessels to show up in His presence and be used. We just have to show up.

God bless!

~Rebekah A

Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work: (As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever. Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;) Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God. For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God ~II Corinthians 9:7-12

Lately God has been calling me on His path of faith. In one of my other posts I alluded to being a blessing for my pastor and his wife through doing something I felt God tell me to do. This past weekend the pastor’s wife testified about what they have been going through lately and it opened my eyes to how amazing God is.

All my life I have heard stories of how people were at the end of their rope, not sure where their next meal would be, not sure how they would pay their bills, and they would pray and God would open the door at the last minute. About two weeks ago I felt God tell me that I had to financially bless my pastor and his family. Now, I’m a student. I’m living off of student loans and every dollar I spend = debt of an ever increasing gaping hole. I understand that my future profession will hopefully help me pay it off, but I also know that every penny saved now is MANY pennies saved later in the world of compound interest. However, when I felt God tell me to give them money I just said “okay, how much and when?” because I truly believe that all the money I have now is from Him and so all my money in the future (or lack thereof) will be from Him too. Since I know with all my heart that He never forsakes the righteous and their seed doesn’t beg for bread, I know that my God who owns the cattle of a thousand hills will provide when I need it. One night before prayer I felt God say that I had to give them a check THAT NIGHT and so I went to prayer with it in an envelope. Unbeknownst to me, God told them that they needed to give a check to a young couple who just had a baby and, although they weren’t 100% sure how they were going to do it, they decided on a certain amount that they felt God telling them to give while at prayer. Low and behold, because I listened to the leading of Him, I gave her an envelope that very night and even though she thought it would be how much they were giving, it was actually that amount and more. After months of struggling financially and wondering if they made the right decision to go into the ministry full time, they felt this was God’s way of telling them that He would take care of them and to keep focusing on feeding His sheep.

This is the God we serve! NEVER in my life did I think that I would ever be the “check in the mail” part of one of these stories. I was crying in my car on the way to prayer this week, thanking God for allowing me the privilege of being part of this testimony but… it doesn’t end there! I have been pretty sick lately, for over two weeks now I’ve been coughing most nights and barely sleeping. Finally I got prescriptions from a doctor and went to fill them last night and paid a large sum for them. It cost almost as much as a month’s worth of groceries for me! Deciding that I needed the medication, I paid the hefty price and went on my way. The next morning, I get a call from one of my doctor’s offices and they told me that a procedure I paid for before out of pocket had been back-paid by my insurance company and the amount was DOUBLE what I paid for my prescriptions! 🙂

Now I’m not saying that if you give money away, God will automatically bless you with money. I’m not even saying that the best thing to give away IS money. Personally I think things that we can give to God include (along with money) our time, effort, passion, and talents. Many may tithe money, but how about our time? How about your talents? Do you play for a band with friends but not for your church? Do you clean your house but never help clean the house of God?

Dear Reader,

Give what little you have to Him and find that He will multiply it and give it back to you in His timing. I didn’t need a financial blessing, I had made space in my budget to accommodate what I gave and yet God just wanted to bless me with it because He is good and His mercy endures forever 🙂 Give Him what you have and discover all the amazing, wonderful ways that He gives back to you!!!

~Rebekah M.